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cigarette
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What is a cigarette?
A cigarette is a paper-wrapped roll of finely cut tobacco used for smoking. They originated in the 16th century when beggars in Seville, Spain, started shredding discarded cigar butts and rolling them in paper scraps. Mass production began with the Bonsack machine in 1880, leading to widespread use by the 20th century.
Cigarettes contain nicotine, a stimulant that leads to addiction, as well as harmful chemicals like tar and carbon monoxide. Smoking is linked to serious health risks, including lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Because of these health risks, many countries have implemented measures to discourage smoking, such as advertising bans and smoking bans in public places.
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What materials are used to make a cigarette?
Cigarettes mainly consist of processed tobacco leaves and cigarette paper.
Beyond tobacco and paper, manufacturers add various substances to preserve shelf life, modify burning properties, control moisture, prevent insect hatching, reduce irritation from nicotine, and add flavors and aromas. Burning these additives creates over 4,000 chemical compounds.
The primary constituents of tobacco smoke are nicotine, tar, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide.
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What chemicals are found in cigarette smoke?
Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemical compounds formed when tobacco and additives burn. Primary components include nicotine, tar, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide.
Many chemicals in cigarette smoke are highly toxic, including carcinogens like benzene, formaldehyde, and acetaldehyde. Nicotine is addictive, while carbon monoxide reduces oxygen in the blood, straining the cardiovascular system.
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How does smoking cigarettes affect a person's health?
Smoking cigarettes has many negative effects on a person's health. Cigarettes contain nicotine, a stimulant, as well as harmful chemicals like poisonous carbon monoxide and tar.
Smoking is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease because carbon monoxide reduces oxygen transport, forcing the heart to work harder. Smoking is also considered to be the cause of 90 percent of all cases of lung cancer.
Additionally, women who smoke during pregnancy have an increased risk of miscarriage, premature birth, and low birth weight babies. Infants exposed to smoke have a higher risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
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Why are there laws and rules about selling or advertising cigarettes?
Laws and rules about selling or advertising cigarettes exist due to the health risks and addictive properties associated with smoking. Scientific research has proven the deadly effects of tobacco, including lung cancer and other diseases, leading to public policy changes. Regulations include restricting advertising, displaying health warnings on packaging, and preventing sales to minors. These measures aim to reduce smoking rates, protect non-smokers from secondhand smoke, and decrease healthcare costs related to tobacco use.
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cigarette, paper-wrapped roll of finely cut tobacco for smoking; modern cigarette tobacco is usually of a milder type than cigar tobacco.
The Aztecs smoked a hollow reed or cane tube stuffed with tobacco. Other natives of Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America crushed tobacco leaves and rolled the shreds in corn (maize) husk or other vegetable wrappers. But it was the cigar rather than this prototype of the cigarette that the conquistadors brought back to Spain as a luxury for the wealthy.
Early in the 16th century beggars in Sevilla (Seville) began to pick up discarded cigar butts, shred them, and roll them in scraps of paper (Spanish papeletes) for smoking, thus improvising the first cigarettes. These poor man’s smokes were known as cigarrillos (Spanish: “little cigars”). Late in the 18th century they acquired respectability and their use spread to Italy and Portugal; they were carried by Portuguese traders to the Levant and Russia. French and British troops in the Napoleonic Wars became familiar with them; the French named them cigarettes. Forty years later another generation of French and British troops, fighting in the Crimean War, made the acquaintance of Turkish cigarettes. At the same time, cigarettes were becoming popular in the United States. British taste later switched to cigarettes filled with unmixed Virginia tobacco, but the U.S. market developed a preference for a blend including some Turkish tobacco.
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At first, all cigarettes were made by hand either by the smoker or in factories. The factory process consisted of hand rolling on a table, pasting, and hand packaging. In 1880 James A. Bonsack was granted a U.S. patent for a cigarette machine in which tobacco was fed onto a continuous strip of paper and was automatically formed, pasted, closed, and cut to lengths by a rotary cutting knife. The Bonsack machine was imported to England in 1883. In the next few years the cigarette industry developed in several European countries.
Improvements in cultivation and processing that lowered the acid content of cigarette tobacco and made it easier to inhale contributed to a major expansion in cigarette smoking during the first half of the 20th century. During World War I the prejudice against smoking by women was broken, and the practice became widespread among women in Europe and the United States in the 1920s.
In the 1950s and ’60s research produced medical evidence that linked cigarette smoking with health hazards, especially with lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. In some countries, notably the United Kingdom and the United States, measures were taken to discourage the use of cigarettes, including a 1971 ban on the advertising of all tobacco products on television and radio in the United States
In the last part of the 20th century and into the 21st century, state, local, and federal regulations in the United States led to bans on smoking in a number of public places including on airplanes (1990). In 1995, California became the first state to ban smoking in restaurants. As of 2023, 35 states now have bans. The result has been a decrease in the percentage of Americans who smoke from almost 42 percent in 1965 to 11.5 percent in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Around the world, smoking has declined as well, according to data from the World Health Organization. In 2000, WHO estimated 33 percent of the world used tobacco products; by 2022 that number had fallen to about 20 percent.